Ex-owner worried about fate of vessel’s buyer

Canadian Duncan Spriggs last saw the Tabasco II last year in Trinidad after telling the new owner he would be back the next day to show him the in­tricacies of the vessel.

“He wasn’t actually into sail­ing," Spriggs said of the man. “I was going to give him some instruction . . . so he’d be able to use the sails."

But when Spriggs went down to the boatyard the next morn­ing, Oleksandr Karpusenko “had taken off on his own" and the Tabasco II was gone.

He thought nothing more of it until the Canadian Coast Guard called his Yukon home Tuesday to tell him the vessel had broken down off Cape Sable Island on Monday night.

Although he sold the boat for $25,000 in November, he is still listed as the owner with auth­orities.

“I still have the papers here," Spriggs said from Mexico, where he is looking for a new, larger sailboat.

“I wanted to save the name. As soon as I register, someone can take the name."

But now that RCMP are in­vestigating the possibility the boat was used to smuggle people into the country, Spriggs isn’t sure he wants to keep the name.

A man named Oleksandr Karpusenko offered to buy the vessel in late October or early November.

Known as Shrek at the boat­yard in Trinidad due to his large size, the Ukrainian looked to be about 45 or 50. His English was limited, but he “was well-liked and a fun guy," Spriggs said.

“He didn’t know how to sail, but he had a lot of experience on commercial boats in the Ukraine . . . that’s what he said. He seemed to recognize boats, big steel boats," Spriggs said.

Karpusenko had to return to Ukraine to arrange the funds, and while he was gone, he told Spriggs he’d contracted dengue fever, an infectious tropical disease.

It seemed plausible because “there seemed to be a bit of an epidemic" at the time in Trini­dad, Spriggs said.

Karpusenko, who said he was from the city of Kherson, return­ed in late November to buy the 1968 Creekmore 11.5-metre winged keel fibreglass monohull cruiser.

Spriggs, an experienced sailor, bought the vessel in February 2008. He sailed it to Cuba, Mex­ico, Belize, Honduras, the Brit­ish Virgin Islands and Trinidad, where it was stored during the hurricane season.

The boat was sturdy but had a few kinks, like collecting sedi­ment in the bottom of the fuel tanks.

“The engine would stall and that’s when you knew it was time to change the filters," Spriggs said.

It was something easily fixed, but “we never had time to go over the boat in detail" before the buyer left.

Spriggs never sailed with more than three people because the quarters were too cramped.

He said he found it very odd that anyone would have nine on board.

When asked what he thought the vessel was doing here at this time of year, something he said he wouldn’t do, and with that many people, Spriggs said: “I don’t know. I’ll leave that to the authorities."

As far as Spriggs knows, the man he knew as Oleksandr Karpusenko may have sold the boat to someone else. No matter who owns it now, Spriggs said he wanted to find out if Shrek was on that boat.